Folia Theologica et Canonica 10. 32/24 (2021)
Sacra theologia
FRENCH CATHOLIC INITIATIVES TOWARDS CHRISTIAN UNITY 15 the two Anglicans, Paul Wattson and Spencer Jones, who first created the prayer opportunities for Christian Unity in 1908. From 1935, however, Couturier extended his unity aspiration to all baptized believers, among Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant, and thus came into contact with various churches. By 1939, his enterprise had been given a name: Universal Week of Prayer for Christian Unity - asking God for unity, as “Christ wills by the means he wills.”5 The week of prayer he initiated for the unity of Christians also crossed the borders of Lyon and France.6 At Couturier’s suggestion, the Ecumenical Community of the Groupe des Dombes (Dombes Group) formed of Catholic and Protestant theologians, was founded in 1937 and gathered every year for theological dialogue. Couturier went to England from 1937 to 1938 to meet representatives of the Anglican Church. In 1939, he met also the Dutch Reformed pastor Willem Visser’t Hooft (1900-1985), who later became the first secretary general of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Geneva (1948-1966), and in the fall of 1940 Roger Schütz (1915-2005), who explained to him his plan to establish an ecumenical monastic community in Taizé. In 1942, as the beginning of the journal Unité Chrétienne, he published Pages Documentaires to spread ecumenical issues and proposed the proclamation of an “Invisible Monastery” (monastére invisible) whose vocation was to gather Christians of different denominations dedicated to unity in prayer.7 Abbé Couturier died on March 24, 1953, who, because of his unity efforts, was described by Cardinal Gerlier as: “Forerunner and model. His work must be continued in the same spirit.”8 The Secretary General of the World Council of Churches, Willem Visser’t Hooft, asked the Archbishop of Lyon to establish an interfaith center that would be able to continue the spirituality of Paul Couturier, especially in spreading the Week of Prayer for Christian unity. Cardinal Pierre Gerlier (1880-1965) asked the Sulpician Pierre Michalon to carry on his work in its entirety. Thus was bom in 1954 in Lyon the Ecumenical Center of Christian Unity (Centre Oecuménique Unité Chrétienne).9 Michalon led the spiritual ecumenism from the small mustard seed into a huge tree into the II. Vatican Council (1962-1965). 5 Villain, M., L ’abbé Paul Couturier, Toumai-Paris 1957. 39. 6 Couturier, Paul-Irénée, in Lossky, N. et al. (ed.), Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, Genava 2022. 263. 7 See Clement, A. N., L’abbé Couturier. Unité des chrétiens et unité del’humanité, Lyon 2015. 45-47. 8 See Allocution du Cardinal Gerlier, Semaine Religieuse du Diocese de Lyon (25 septembre 1953) 515. 9 See Clement, A. N., L 'abbé Couturier, 47-48.
